Condo market shows resiliency..

2017 has been a turbulent year for the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) housing market, with the Ontario government’s Fair Housing Plan ushering in a frenzied wave of transactions, now being followed by a steep decline in sales. Despite the turmoil, new figures released by the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) show that while overall home sales declined […]

Tax changes and the small business world…

Tim Cestnick July 21, 2017 Ever since the 2017 federal budget in March, when the government announced that tax changes affecting private corporations would be coming, I’ve been feeling queasy. Well, the proposed tax changes were announced by Bill Morneau, the Finance Minister, on Tuesday. And ugly they are. Here’s a primer on the potential […]

Upside of the housing downturn…

Royal LePage CEO Phil Soper says that, like a lot of chief executives, he is prone to optimism. But that didn’t stop him from calling Toronto the least healthy housing market in the country when prices were galloping ahead in the double digits in the first quarter of the year, peaking at 33 per cent year over year […]

Mortgage fraud thriving in Canada..

In early 2013, Kelly Vandenham and her boyfriend were preparing to put an offer on a charming Craftsman-style house in West Kelowna, B.C. They had been pre-approved for a mortgage with Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, but the couple’s realtor suggested they could get a lower interest rate at Toronto-Dominion Bank, where their realtor’s boyfriend, […]